


You be Rose and I'll be Jack

by orphan_account



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Drawing, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-30
Updated: 2012-04-30
Packaged: 2017-11-04 15:11:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick is really quite an exceptional artist, and his favourite subject is Monroe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You be Rose and I'll be Jack

The first time Monroe realized Nick was sketching and taking notes on him, he was a little freaked out.

 

They were in Nick’s trailer and he was flipping though one of those musty, mold-smelling books that Monroe avoided because they made him sneeze. Something in the book made Nick frown, and he shot Monroe a glace before picking up a pen and making a few annotations in the margin.

 

“Should you be doing that?” Monroe asked somewhat nervously, because the thought of making changes (in _pen_ , nonetheless) in such ancient looking books was cringe-worthy.

 

“They’re my books, and the information in them is wrong.” Nick glanced at him again and furrowed his brow, then flipped a page and quickly made a few sweeping sort of motions with the pen that could only mean he was sketching.

 

Monroe put down the ornamental dagger he’d been inspecting and shuffled over. “What information is wrong?”

 

Nick tilted the book slightly so Monroe couldn’t see what he was doing, and shrugged. “Nothing much.  Just—there’s stuff missing?” He glanced at Monroe again. “Could you let your wolf out for a second? I want to get the shape of your eyes right.”

 

“Dude, are you sketching me?” Monroe was shocked, and Nick blushed very slightly before rolling his eyes at Monroe’s disbelief and nodding.

 

“There’s next to nothing about wieder wesen in these things. I want any grimms that come after me to know about your whole lifestyle.”

 

Monroe was not convinced. “And you sketching _me_ in particular is going to help, how?”

 

Nick licked his lips and then sighed. “I’ve got an entry on you started.”

 

“What.”

 

“I want my possible descendants to know that I’m partnered up with a blutbad!” Nick said defensively, and swung to the side so Monroe couldn’t reach the book he was writing in, holding it out at arm’s length. “That you’re not all crazy, blood-lusting, um…”

 

“Most of us are,” Monroe countered, and reached across Nick to grab at the book. “You shouldn’t be giving fledgling grimms false hope, dude.”

 

“You’re one in a million,” Nick told him, grinning, and relinquished his hold on the book. Monroe snatched it and huffed slightly at him.

 

“Damn right, man.” He looked down at the annotated blutbad entry Nick had been scribbling all over and sighed. “You’re just crossing stuff out?”

 

“You don’t sprout armor plating or have five inch spring-loaded, poisonous fangs,” Nick said blandly, tilting his chair back on two legs and staring at the ceiling. “And you can be reasoned with. Quite easily, actually—you practically show me your belly when I ask you to do something.”

 

Monroe reached out and prodded Nick’s chair, and the grimm tipped over backward with a squawk. Monroe snorted. “How’s that for showing my belly?” He flipped through the pages and reached a half-filled one that was dominated by a rough sketch of his face and a few bullet points under the title ‘Wieder.’ He read through Nick’s scrawl quickly.

 

“Not all wieder are vegetarian,” he commented. “Hap and Rolf weren’t. I just do it cause, uh. I like meat a lot.”

 

Nick picked himself up from the floor and dusted his jacket off. “You’re an ass.”

 

“Well.” Monroe shrugged. “You’re the one putting my face in the Big Book of Murder. I think some assholery is deserved.”

 

“It’s not like I wrote down your name and address,” Nick said, and took the book back from Monroe’s unresisting hands. “I just want something in here about how things may not always be what they seem.”

 

Monroe cocked an eyebrow. “You gonna write something about how you accused me of kidnapping the first time you saw me, and how you constantly make ‘good dog’ jokes, you horrible, horrible racist?”

 

“Shut up, blutbad,” Nick said, pointing a threatening finger and laughing. “You know you love it.”

 

~~~

 

The second time Nick turned his grimm-ly focus on Monroe, he was less subtle about it.

 

“Show me your wolf face,” he ordered, and Monroe paused with his wine glass halfway to his mouth and shot Nick an Are-You-Freaking-Serious? look. Nick pointed at him with his pen and looked expectant.

 

“Why?” Monroe took a swallow of wine (a 2008 Malbec, Nick had actually picked up something _nice_ for once) and put it on the end table before crossing his arms. They were at Monroe’s house, and Nick’s ancient books were nowhere in sight. Instead, Nick had apparently procured something that looked like an art student’s small sketchbook. Monroe had seen him carrying it around, but hadn’t seen it open until tonight.

 

Nick looked at him like he was missing a few IQ points. “For the book? We talked about this?”

 

“I’m pretty sure I look like most other blutbaden,” Monroe said slowly. “And don’t you have, like, an eidetic memory for faces or something?”

 

Nick blinked at him. “I want to get it right, and every time I’ve seen you wolfed out, it’s been in moments of high tension.”

 

“That’s cause I don’t do it unless it’s in moments of high tension.” Monroe frowned. “It’s a control thing.”

 

Nick fidgeted with the pen, spinning it between his fingers. “Please?”

 

Monroe rumbled deep in his chest, but then shook his head and let his wolf out. Nick grinned at him and curled over the sketchbook, his pen flying. After a minute or so of this, Monroe sighed. “Are you done?”

 

“Just…” Nick scooted forward slightly on the couch and reached his hand out. Monroe leaned back, startled.

 

“Dude, what are you doing?”

 

Nick sighed. “Is it fur or hair?”

 

“Um, I—”

 

Monroe’s flabbergasted response was met with rolled eyes, and Nick reached out again. This time, Monroe was prepared for it (not that it wasn’t weird as hell) and didn’t move back. Nick stroked down his jaw for a split second, then felt the bone ridges over his eyes and cheeks. His touch was light—so light that it was barely there, but Monroe felt like he’d been punched in the gut.

 

When Nick pulled back, Monroe shook his head and his wolf features disappeared. He grabbed blindly at his wine and took a healthy gulp, trying to calm himself down. Yea, that was… weird, and his heart shouldn’t be beating so fast cause Nick had touched his face. Nick touched him all the time. He blinked and fought the urge to flee into the kitchen.

 

Nick didn’t seem to notice his discomfort—he just made a ‘hrm’ noise in the back of this throat and went back to sketching.

 

“You know,” Monroe said shakily, “you’re probably the first grimm to ever want to touch a blutbad like that.”

 

Nick looked up at him and smiled that mischievous grin of his. “Yea, well, you’re probably the first blutbad to ever _let_ a grimm touch him like that.”

 

~~~

 

The third time Nick sketched him, they were trapped in a cave-in and Monroe was entirely transformed.

 

Nick was propped against one of the cave walls, his injured leg stretched out in front of him, and Monroe was pacing back and forth, growling lowly and constantly under his breath. Slowly though, he became aware of a gentle scratching noise and raised an eyebrow when he realized Nick had pulled out a pen and notebook and was following Monroe’s movements with his eyes, drawing him by the light of the flashlight.

 

He walked over and nudged Nick’s notebook and then looked around at their surroundings, clearly asking ‘Now? Really?’

 

Nick sighed. “You need to calm down enough to change back and I can’t exactly dig us out alone if I can’t put any weight on my leg. And none of my books have a drawing of a fully-transformed blutbad.”

 

Monroe sat down and took a deep breath, willing his pulse to slow—Nick was right, he needed to calm down. After a minute of calming breaths, he was able to rearrange his vocal cords and tongue back to something more resembling human—at least enough that he could force out a few words with difficulty.

 

“’No gr’mm seen shift’d bl’tbad an’ liv’d,” he growled, and Nick nodded.

 

“I figured. That’s awesome, by the way, that you can talk like that.” He made a note in his book and then went back to sketching.

 

Monroe didn’t bother trying to answer him (it made his throat hurt to try to talk as a wolf) and concentrated on shifting back. It hurt—it always hurt—and that was one reason he almost never did this. He ignored the scribbling of Nick’s pen and slowly, slowly felt his wolf edges blur and retreat. It was so much easier to let the wolf out than to pull it back in…

 

Maybe ten minutes later, he was lying on his back on the cave floor, breathing heavily and trying not to cringe as his bones hardened and thickened the final bit. He was suddenly aware that Nick had dragged himself over and had covered him with the somewhat tattered remnants of his jeans.

 

“Thanks,” he panted, and sat up stiffly, pulling his pants on. They weren’t completely in shreds, which was nice—he’d had the wherewithal to at least unbutton them before he shifted.

 

“You shouldn’t do that, you know,” Nick said conversationally as he continued to sketch Monroe’s wolf form from memory. Monroe leaned over and looked at the drawing.

 

“The ruff on my neck is thicker,” he said. “And by ‘that’ do you mean bite witches who have you by the throat?”

 

“I do indeed,” Nick said, and added a more pronounced shock of fur around Monroe’s neck.  

 

Monroe rolled his eyes. “I didn’t get hurt.”

 

The pen and notebook dropped to the ground, and Monroe suddenly found himself grabbed by the back of the neck and presented with a faceful of a very determined-looking grimm. “It is never okay for you to get hurt in my place, Monroe.” Nick’s voice was soft, but his eyes were pure steel. “This is my job, not yours.”

 

“Um. Yea, yea, okay,” Monroe stammered. Nick watched him carefully for a drawn out moment and then leaned back, releasing Monroe’s neck and wincing.

 

Monroe grabbed the notebook and pen and stuck them in his back pockets. “Okay man, let’s get out of here.”

 

“Don’t lose that book,” Nick warned, and they started moving rocks.

 

~~~

 

Monroe flipped through a stack of papers on Nick’s kitchen table. The drawings were mostly various wesen, but there were a fair amount of random human moments thrown in, too. Monroe tilted his head and inspected a sketch of what looked like a banana slug crawling its way up a twig. He glanced at Nick, who was making peanut butter sandwiches in preparation for their hike this afternoon.

 

“Where’d you learn to draw?”

 

“Took a couple classes in school, and I just, I don’t know. It comes to me naturally.” Nick looked over his shoulder at Monroe, and his eyes widened slightly when he realized he was thumbing through the stack of papers. “Hey, uh…”

 

“Sorry.” Monroe started to put the papers down, but the next one under his fingers was, well, quite clearly him. He pulled it out of the stack and stared at it. “Wow, Nick. That’s really good.”

 

Nick turned around and plastered on a smile when he saw which picture Monroe was looking at. “Well,” he said, just a hint too casually, “you’re a good subject.” He licked his lips and walked over, gently pulling the paper from Monroe’s hands. “I can’t get your eyes right, though. You never sit still long enough.”

 

Monroe swallowed hard and blinked down at Nick (who was standing way too close, man, does he have no sense of personal boundaries?) “I sit still.”

 

Nick chewed on his lip and tried to suppress a smirk (he failed). “If I told you to sit and stay…?” Monroe narrowed his eyes, and Nick grinned. “That’s what I thought.”

 

“Dude, you get one more dog joke this month before you have officially gone over your limit, and I don’t have to be responsible for my actions.” Monroe crossed his arms, but then leaned back slightly when Nick stepped even closer. He tapped Monroe on the nose.

 

“Bad. No barking.”

 

Monroe closed his eyes and shook his head. “Dude, I _hate_ you.” When he went to look at Nick again, the grimm had moved back to the counter and was finishing making their sandwiches, laughing softly to himself. Monroe sighed and plopped down in one of the kitchen chairs, grumbling something about rudeness, and completely missed the fact that Nick had neatly steered them away from the Why-Are-You-Drawing-Me-All-The-Damn-Time conversation.

 

~~~

 

Monroe was the one in the hospital this time, and it was totally not his fault. It wasn’t Nick’s fault, either—but it _was_ the Reapers’ fault, and their stupid ambush and now Monroe was concerned that he would ever have full movement in his left hand again.

 

But right now he was half-dozing, riding the high of the good drugs, listening to Bach’s cello suite number one in his head and humming softly to himself. He was aware, in a vague sort of way, that he was not alone in this tiny hospital room that smelled so strongly of disinfectant, but the presence at the head of his bed was a familiar one, and the hand clinging tightly to his uninjured right hand was strong and comforting. He drifted off, reassured by the warmth of the onlooker, and fell into a slightly restless drugged sleep.

 

When he awoke again, it was to the soft skritching of a pen on paper. He turned his head slowly, watching Nick from under half-closed eyes. The grimm was entirely unaware that Monroe had woken, and was drawing something carefully in that sketch book again. The fingers on his left hand were threaded tightly with the fingers on Monroe’s right.

 

“Hey,” Monroe croaked, and Nick jumped, pulling back his hand and dropping his sketchbook.

 

“Hey.” Nick’s face split into a grin and he leaned over Monroe’s bed. “You scared me a little bit there, man.”

 

“Yea, well…” Monroe trailed off and glanced around for some water. Nick noticed and scrambled to pour him a cup, even going far enough to tilt it toward Monroe’s mouth, despite Monroe’s protests.

 

After a few minutes of Nick filling him in on what had happened after the Reaper had jumped them and nearly sliced Monroe’s hand off (the fact that Nick had ended up decapitating the guy left Monroe with an entirely too-familiar feeling of pleasure in his chest), Monroe leaned over and plucked up Nick’s sketchbook from where it had fallen on the ground next to his bed.

 

“Drawing me again?”

 

Nick blushed and tried to grab the book away, but Monroe just smirked and flipped through the pages, stopping when he got to the last full ones.

 

The last three pages of the book were entirely filled with sketches of his hands. A few were of how he’d probably looked, lying unconscious in the hospital bed, but more were of his hands in action. Holding a screwdriver, clasped together, stirring something. There were a few of how they looked when he was sporting claws.

 

Several were of his fingers wrapped around the neck of his cello. He glanced at his bandaged hand and then up at Nick, who was watching him anxiously.

 

“The doctors said that any nerve damage you _might_ have sustained was, uh. Fixable. You’re probably going to need physical therapy, but you’ll still be able to play.”

 

Monroe forced a smile. “Well, I wasn’t ever going to be playing Carnegie Hall.”

 

Nick let out a pained breath. “Dude…” He reached out and grabbed Monroe’s unbandaged hand, pulling it toward him and then suddenly placing a light kiss on his knuckles. He smiled shakily. “You’ll be fine.”

 

Monroe stared at him and tried to remember to breathe.

 

~~~

 

Nick was curled up on Monroe’s couch, sketchbook in hand, watching as Monroe clumsily worked his way through some scales on his cello. The doctors had been pleased with Monroe’s recovery—there had been less nerve damage than they’d predicted (cause hello, blutbad) and he’d ended up with only some very slight numbing in his pinky and ring fingers. The jagged scar on the side of his hand where the scythe had gone in was completely numb, but it didn’t have much of an effect on anything Monroe tried to do.

 

Still, a month in a cast had made his hand weak, and now that he’d finally gotten the okay from his physical therapist, he wanted to start playing again as soon as possible. He sunk into the music, and barely even noticed when the familiar scrape of the pen started from over on the couch.

 

After ten minutes or so, Monroe paused, massaging his protesting muscles, and glanced over at Nick, who was absorbed in drawing him. “How many drawings of me are you putting in your books?” he teased slightly, and Nick glanced up, his face serious.

 

“Do you want me to stop?”

 

Monroe blinked, suddenly off-kilter. “Uh, no? I guess. I mean…”

 

Nick nodded slightly, that smirking grin starting to form on his lips. “I like drawing you.”

 

Monroe swallowed and looked back down at his cello, willing Nick not to notice the blush that was spreading across his cheeks in the dim light of the evening. But Nick was standing up and walking over—of course he’d noticed, he was an effing police detective—and resting his hands on Monroe’s shoulders.

 

“It’s kind of intimate,” Nick said, and reached down Monroe’s arm, picking up his left hand and looking at it. He traced the scar, and the weird numb-tingly feeling followed that made Monroe want to shiver. “If you want me to stop, I will.” Monroe suddenly got the impression that Nick wasn’t just talking about his drawing habit.

 

“…I don’t want you to stop.” Monroe’s voice was quiet and slightly strained, and he closed his eyes when he felt a puff of Nick’s breath on his ear, followed by a light brush of lips against his neck.

 

“Nick, wait,” Monroe said, strangled, and Nick pulled back immediately.

 

“I’m sorry, oh man, I’m reading it wrong…”

 

Monroe blinked out of his haze at Nick’s pained words and stood, nearly upsetting the cello, and grabbed Nick’s arm, pulling him back from where he’d started to retreat across the room.

 

“No! Nick, you’re not reading it wrong at all, just, hold on a second.” He flashed Nick a grin and let go of his arm (Nick looked much more reassured) and carefully put his cello away before walking over to the couch and pulling Nick down to sit next to him.

 

“We should, uh, be adults and talk about this.” Monroe smiled at Nick and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. Nick let out a sigh and buried his head in Monroe’s neck and nodded.

 

“So if I pass you a note in class that says ‘Do you like Nick Burkhardt, circle yes/no’ what do you circle?”

 

Monroe nuzzled his nose into Nick’s hair. “Not exactly an adult conversation, but I’d circle yes.”

 

Nick pulled back and looked him in the eye. “I’ve been dancing around you for months, what are we waiting for?”

 

“Oh, I don’t know, Nick. The fact that we’re not technically even the same species? And that I’ve got instincts that you’re not used to? And that I could hurt you without meaning to? Blutbaden can be, uh. Rough.”

 

“Yea, I got that impression from my books.”

 

Monroe raised an eyebrow. “Your books have notes about blutbaden sex drives? And here I was thinking it was all about the best ways to cut off our heads… Maybe I should be paying closer attention to these books.”

 

Nick shoved lightly at his shoulder. “There’s nothing specific, you pervert, just some vague references to mate-marking, which is probably exactly what it sounds like, right?”

 

Monroe blushed. “Yea, you would be correct…”

 

“Well right now, I would really like to kiss you. You can’t hurt me from kissing.” Nick rested his head on Monroe’s shoulder and pressed himself closer. “Would that be acceptable? We can figure everything out as we go, but I want this. We should go slowly, but I want _you._ ” He grinned into Monroe’s neck. “Besides, I don’t put out on the first date. I’m not some common harlot.”

 

“Are you implying that I _am_ some common harlot?” Monroe’s voice rumbled with amusement, and Nick smirked, pressed his lips to Monroe’s neck. Monroe leaned into his touch and turned his head, catching Nick’s lips in a soft, short kiss.

 

When they broke apart, Nick bit his lip and looked up at Monroe, his eyes slightly dilated and full of desire. “Good boy,” he said with a smirk.

 

“You realize that implies bestiality,” Monroe said with an incredulous look, and pulled Nick into his lap, giving him the control of the situation. Nick just smiled dangerously at him and leaned in to continue their kiss.  

 

~~~

 

Months had come and gone—Monroe’s hand was as healed as it was going to be, Nick had had some time to recover after yet another Reaper attack, they’d drunk themselves into a stupor when Nick realized that his captain was wesen, and then drunk themselves into _another_ stupor when Monroe made the Renard-is-royalty connection. They’d handled an uprising organized by some extremely unpleasant trolls, negotiated a labor strike for the beavers, and dealt with a false lawsuit from Adalind when she reared her entirely too-beautiful face.

 

Nick had also moved in.

 

He had _also_ not given up his habit of sketching Monroe at every possible opportunity. Their bedroom was littered with notebooks filled with various depictions of his face (and hands and arms and back and legs and tail and…).

 

“Come on,” Nick was saying one lazy Sunday afternoon, and Monroe pulled the comforter up over his head.

 

“Dude, you’ve seen me naked, like, a hundred times. Do it from memory.”

 

“It’s more intimate like this,” Nick complained, and tapped his pen on his latest sketchbook. “Please? We could reenact another scene from Titanic later, but we’d have to be in my truck—I’m not trying sex in the Bug again.” Monroe lowered the covers slightly (just enough to glare) and Nick grinned lecherously at him.

 

“I’m not—” but Monroe’s words of protest died when Nick crawled onto the bed and straddled him.

 

“All those times I’ve drawn you,” Nick purred, leaning down and pressing kisses to the top of Monroe’s head, “and you’ve never realized I wanted a nude model?”

 

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” Monroe’s voice was muffled by the blankets, but he managed to sound put-upon regardless.

 

Nick grinned at him. “Nope.” He shifted on the bed and yanked the covers down. “Though I think I’ll need some ‘relief,’ if you will, if I want to concentrate on the actual drawing.”

 

“Well god forbid you’re unable to concentrate on ‘drawing,’” Monroe deadpanned, and rolled them, pinning Nick to the bed and licking lightly up his neck. Nick laughed softly and reached between them, touching them together and letting his eyes roll back in the way he knew Monroe liked.

 

“Right now I’m just concentrating on you,” Nick breathed, and Monroe leaned down, pressing hot kisses into his face and neck.

 

“Damn right.”

 

They didn’t talk for awhile after that.

 

Later, when Monroe was lying boneless on the bed, Nick caught him by surprise and picked up the sketchbook again, lazy swoops of his pen pinning Monroe’s image to the page. Monroe didn’t complain—he just smiled slightly and stretched. He’d been planning on letting Nick draw him from the beginning.

 

“Can I just ask that any naked pictures you have of me don’t get put in your grimm books?”

 

“You can ask, sure,” Nick said with a smirk, and bent over the paper, shading something. “No promises, though.” Monroe glared half-heartedly at him.

 

“I hate you, you know that, right?”

 

Nick just smiled at him and went back to his drawings. 

**Author's Note:**

> Grimm, stop making it so easy to procrastinate writing final papers. Gah. 
> 
> Also, the title is a Titanic reference, if you didn't get that. God, I feel old.


End file.
